Bacteria routinely transmit genetic information - that's how they get resistance to antibiotics so easily. In a sense, that's happening now in higher organisms. We're starting to move human genes into laboratory animals - producing farm-animal milk, for instance, with proteins found in human mothers' milk. The definition of a species is reproductive isolation - a lack
of interbreeding. Once we break down the barrier to the movement of genetic information, then the idea
of species isn't as meaningful.

How soon will we clone humans?

I was with a group of scientists recently at a UCLA seminar, and most thought it would be done within
10 years. But they also thought that news of it might not be reported, at least not immediately.

Won't some people view these new variations on life as soulless replicants, something out of Blade Runner?

We can go in two directions. One is to narrow our empathies, the other is to broaden them - which is what I think is happening. People have talked about growing clones for organs - nonsense. A clone would be viewed as a person, just as an identical twin is. And before long it's likely we'll even become emotionally tied to the increasingly sophisticated electronic devices around us. Once they mimic conscious behavior, we will like them and may not want to turn them off. Why would we feel any less attached to modified humans? If anything, genetic engineering is going to expand our sense of what it means to be human.